I enjoy a good bag and a good purse. I have no qualms about being a man who wears a purse, and I’ll usually correct you if you use some silly word like “man bag”, “man purse”, or even worse, “murse.” I’m not Adam West.

I currently use the Tom Bihn Ristretto as a purse.

I’ve been using the Ristretto since 2012, and I still really like it, 4 years later.

I use the Tom Bihn Brain Bag when I need waaay more space, or am traveling.

I had tried a Tom Bihn Synapse 19, but it was just a smidgen too small for the work travel I was doing, where I needed two laptops and some equipment. The Brain Bag is big–really big–but it shrinks up better than you’d think if you don’t need it fully expanded.

The Synapse 25 wasn’t out when I bought my Brain Bag, but it’s probably the next bag I’ll try.

The Maxpedition Neatfreak was pretty durable, a good size (it’s bigger than it looks in this photo), and worked well, but I didn’t really like the look. It looks a little too military/prepper for me.

I’m not 100% sure which Timbuk2 laptop backpack I had, but it fit a 13″ laptop and a few thick EE textbooks just fine. It had a main pocket, and two side pockets. It lasted about five years before tearing apart.

My son is 18 months old, and he loves to run around and touch pretty things. We have some really pretty, old and fragile Christmas ornaments from Amanda’s side of the family, but I was too scared to put them on our tree this year.

I designed some tree ornaments in Fusion 360, and printed them out. I found a cool trick where I was able to get the printed ornament to be a single layer thick, and have a hollow bottom. This means you can use a traditional metal ornament cap, or print one. The thin walls also means they are pretty when you put them over your Christmas lights.

Esperanto has two main symbols–the green five-pointed star, which is on the flag, and the Jubilee symbol, and at least one holiday. Esperanto Day is December 15th, and this year, I designed and 3D printed a Jubilee cookie cutter!

I hadn’t ever designed a cookie cutter with indents in the middle before, but they turned out pretty well! Next year, I think I’ll get some cookie cutters made with a food-safe process, so I feel comfortable giving them to other people.

This year for Esperanto Day, people are asking that Esperanto speakers post that #EsperantoLives! (So I am!)

Evildea is a relatively famous Esperanto YouTuber, and he made an #EsperantoLives post today. Watch it!

“Wait, wait,” you say. “You can’t just show us cookies without giving us a poorly edited high-school style essay about Esperanto.” Fine. If you ask for it…

Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. It was initially created by L. L Zamenhof in the 1880s, and was released to the world through the first book “Unua Libro” on July 26th, 1887. His goal was to create an easy-to-learn, politically neutral second language to help bring about peace and understanding between different people around the world.

I am skeptical it will bring about world peace, but it’s definitely an easy language to learn for native speakers of many different languages, and not a difficult one for most anyone. Some studies have been done that showed that learning Esperanto before learning another language, like French, increased how well you learned French, at a greater rate than just studying French the whole time.

I started learning Esperanto about four months ago, through Duolingo, an online language learning tool. It is a pretty good way to start to learn Esperanto. I spent about an hour a day learning for the first few days, and now spend about twenty minutes a day. I tweet sometimes about Esperanto things, or in Esperanto, at @adamo_esperanto.

Jubilee!

Like I mentioned earlier, Esperanto has two main symbols–the green five-pointed star, which is on the flag, and the Jubilee symbol. The Jubilee symbol, a Latin E and a CyrilicЭ smooshed together, was created at the 100th anniversary of Esperanto. This was 1987, during the Cold War, and the two symbols that begin the word Esperanto in English and Russian were to represent the joining of the East and West.

Esperanto also has a holiday, Esperanto Day, on December 15th. This was Zamenhof’s birthday. (Coincidentally, it’s suitably close to the solstice and many other holidays.) Many Esperanto speakers buy an extra book in Esperanto and get together with other Esperanto speakers. I made cookies with a custom cookie cutter, above.

It puzzles me that some people react with anger and frustration when they find out I am learning Esperanto. It’s certainly no less useful or entertaining than spending the equivalent time watching TV or dinking around on Facebook, but I have had people genuinely get angry with me for learning Esperanto. Today, however, it is safe in most of the world to speak Esperanto, which hasn’t always been the case. Many of the political regimes of the 20th century actively hunted down and killed Esperanto speakers. Others simply marked Esperanto speakers as spies or political criminals.

Since the 1960s, there has been a couch-surfing program, Pasaporta Servo, for people who speak Esperanto. Many people alive today who grew up speaking Esperanto talk about how fun it was when someone from “Esperantoland” stayed for a night or two.

There are some native speakers who grew up speaking Esperanto, and some of them had children who grew up speaking Esperanto, and there are even a few cases of third generation native Esperanto speakers. (There aren’t any people I could find who grew up speaking exclusively Esperanto.)

There’s a good body of Esperanto literature. William Auld, a pretty awesome poet, was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature for pieces in Esperanto.

Phew! Feel free to ask me more about Esperanto or head over to Duolingo or lernu.net (they’re both free!) and join us!

I do a lot of things. Professionally, I spent the bulk of my work week with Digi Wireless Design Services. It rebrands every year or two, as these things tend to do. It was Etherios Wireless Design, and previously Spectrum Design Solutions.

As part of the rebrand, the marketing folks asked me if I’d talk about a project I did this last year that everyone was really happy with. Usually I work in a team, but for this project, I was the only engineer. I built an interactive wireless network with some Teensys and XBees and Neopixels, and got it show-ready in under a week end-to-end using an Othermill and some other rapid prototyping tools. The customer really liked it, as did the rest of the Digi team. This project with Seattle Sport Sciences even ended up in the Digi quarterly earnings report press release!

Anyway, I outlined a short video for them, and they wrote it up on a whiteboard, and tada!

I’m relatively pleased how this video turned out. 7 minutes, no scene cuts, and while I’m not perfectly fluent, I think I did a pretty good job.

I was relistening to Glean by They Might Be Giants this weekend. Like every TMBG album, it grows on you. I was listening to “All the Lazy Boyfriends”, a track I had mostly skipped over before, and paid attention to the lyrics. One part in particular grabbed me.

All the lazy boyfriends are preparing to change

They’re standing in the kitchen and preparing to change

All the lazy boyfriends are preparing to change

This American splendor spreads out before you

From basements to attics, garages to sheds

Who needs a vacation? Who needs a direction?

Who needs motivation when you live in your head?

While the song seems to be about lazy moochy boyfriends, They Might Be Giants are actually warning us about a common problem: over-preparing to change!

Lots of folks spent a bunch of time and money thinking about the perfect way to start. Sometimes it’s warranted, but usually it isn’t. You probably should spend a bunch of time thinking about expertise once you’re solidly an “actual beginner” stage, rather than “someone who thinks about it a lot.”

Living in your head is comfortable. In your head, it looks just like a featured Pinterest project, but in the real world, you may find out it isn’t quite as easy. In fact, the longer an idea lives in your head without touching the real world, the harder it is to manifest it, because the more you think about it, the grander and more wondrous it becomes. That gap between desire and reality gets bigger and bigger, and it can become paralyzing. Sure, it’s fun to think about things, but given the explicit choice, I would generally prefer to make something, rather than think about making it.

I still have this problem. My short-duration personal anti-savior for this is a person I met at a hackerspace who regularly discusses a project he’ll get to Real Soon Now that he started thinking about in the early 1980s.

So, fellow meatbags, stop preparing to change and start changing, and stop living in your head so much!